After spending the night in the Taiga’s tower, my gear is far too beaten up to risk confronting the goblins again, so I carry on looping around to home again.

Mods Encountered

Dungeon Pack : I think Dungeon Pack was the source of the Castle of Disappointment. It was probably the victim of some bad timing, in as much as it had only just generated when I arrived, so it had not had a night-time period that would have allowed the spider spawner to put out some minions. Regardless, the zombie spawner was never going to do too well in a roofless building, unless I was foolish enough to attack at night.

Not Dungeonpack’s finest moment, but it does have some pretty good structures that I’ll be encountering before too long.

Grimoire of Gaia by Silentine : I think that was the first time I’ve had my head torn off by a gryphon since they were changed to only spawn above a certain height. That’ll teach me to not look both ways before running into my valley.

Grimoire of Gaia mobs often drop small chunks of iron, emerald, or even (rarely) diamond. Once you have enough of them, you can combine them for a full gem. Beyond that, they also have a range of unique drops, so the reward is certainly there to balance out the risk.

Returning from a brief hiatus, I am filled with the desire to expand my horizons. Packing my best sword, I head off into the Taiga west of my home. Until now, I’ve only explored the edges, while looking for bees, and setting up some hives. What other mysteries must it hold?

Mods Encountered

Taigore’s Inventory Saver 3: Astonishingly, I think that might have been my first on screen death. I can assure you there have been plenty of off-screen ones. So it is that this is the first time I’ve had a chance to demonstrate Taigore’s Inventory Saver. It is a great boon for anyone who finds the idea of all their vital stuff despawning after 5 minutes to be an unimaginable horror.

It might not be too awful in vanilla, I suppose, but losing my spellbook, my thaumic goggles, and all my backpacks would be overly punitive.

Extra Biomes XL 3.13.4 : The giant oak tree I was using as a landmark is a rare addition from Extra Biomes XL. Would probably make a very nice spot for a tree house.

Goblins 4.2 by Sartharis : Grrrrrr, GOBLINS!!! They’re a menace to Minecraftia, and shall feel my just wrath. Though possibly not quite yet. While I handled the small patrol camp in the desert easily enough, goblin villages are a very different kettle of fiends.

We got a glimpse of a colourful totem pole within the village. Those are unique blocks that can be used for some special recipes.

Gathering my ingredients, and calling forth the power of Vis, I succeed in creating some rather snazzy headgear.

I then go on a quick tour of my local nodes, examining common, pure, and unstable varieties. I don’t know any of any dark nodes in my world, which is probably a Good Thing.

Note: I have some medical stuff that happens on a three month cycle, and I’m right at the end of that, with treatment due this Thursday. I’ve been flagging for the last week or so, but for the next few days I’m mostly just going to want to sleep, and concentrating will be very hard. So in the interests of not making completely rubbish videos, I’m going to take the rest of the week off! With any luck I should be refilled with vim and vigour by Friday.

Mods Encountered

Thaumcraft by Azanor: The Goggles are mine!I’m going to try to wear them as my standard kit now, though I’ll need to keep a close eye on their state of repair. I don’t want to have to replace them.

Ars Magica by Mithion: The Hecate is quite a nuisance. It counts as a zombie for the purposes of smashing doors down, and kills villagers. It can also fly. I’m not sure if it’s capable of zombiefying them. By the time I realised there was a problem, the place was empty.

I’ve not helped myself by having a one building village. It makes a total wipeout far more of a possibility. I shall have to think about how I want to expand the living arrangements over there.

A bit of a jumbled mix of things I needed to get done today. I have certain rules about how I do this Let’s Play. One is that I don’t use any cheats, or give myself free stuff. I don’t feel you really come to understand a mod if you just magic all the parts or ingredients into existence.

But the rule that sometimes causes episodes like this is that I can’t do something when I’m not recording, unless I’ve already covered it in the show. And so it is that we have two pipe and liquid episodes in a row, as I really needed to get working on my full tank of oil, and I’d accidentally gone and discovered seed oil without you.

Mods Encountered

Buildcraft maintained by CovertJaguar: The refinery (and indeed the oil wells added to worldgen) is a rather high-end bit of Buildcraft kit. It is a monster of a machine that can devour far more power than I’m capable of producing right now, so it is operating rather slowly. It nevertheless is making fuel far faster than I could possibly use it. Fuel is just that energy-dense.

Using the same pipe for two different liquids is generally a terrible idea, and had I realised that cherries squeeze into seed oil rather than fruit juice I certainly would not have done it! Still, given that seed oil is something I am going to need in abundance, the discovery was well worth a few plumbing problems.

Forestry by Sir Sengir: Discovering that some trees require time for their fruit to ripen was a huge relief. I’m not really ready to be toying with Forestry automated farms just yet, so being able to get the fruit through mere patience and a spot of axing made me quite pleased.

Extra Bees and Extra Trees by Binnie: The Orchard Apple and Common Beech trees are from Extra Trees. It’s all quite seamless, so I had to nip over to his website to check the tree list. I’m not sure if anyone would want spoilers on the necessary tree crosses to get them, but as the in-game tree database that should update when I discover a new tree is not working right now, I don’t actually know. I have found that simply planting a bunch of different trees together has worked pretty well for me so far as getting all-new species is concerned. I shall certainly need to do a little more planning later on.

The Silver Lime – Apple Oak cross was more deliberate, and I picked the best one from a number of different hybrids. Twice the biomass of an apple oak, with at least as many apples, they’re my current biomass fermenting workhorses.

Railcraft by CovertJaguar : Railcraft deserves another mention, seeing as I built an even bigger tank in between episodes. 1600 buckets of fuel should be sufficient storage. If it turns out not to be, you can extend the tank upwards without losing its contents.

My oil drilling has been a splendid success, but it has left me with the problem of where to store it all. Buildcraft tanks are excellent for moderate amounts of liquids, but for massive storage, the best way is to go with some variety of multiblock tank, and I’m going to be using Railcraft’s Iron Tanks for that purpose

Mods Encountered

Railcraft by CovertJaguar : The first appearance for Railcraft! There are quite a lot of other mods which also offer some sort of multitank, but Railcraft’s are relatively simple to make and work beautifully. I had a few little problems during the video, but we worked through them in the end.

Buildcraft maintained by CovertJaguar: The pipes and redstone engines that form the basis of my technological exploits are all from Buildcraft. I have quite a web of piping all over the place now. I’ll be glad to be able to dismantle my oil pipeline. As it was always going to be temporary, it didn’t seem worth burying, but it is rather an eyesore.

Forestry by Sir Sengir: Butterflys are a new addition to Forestry, and do not yet serve much of a purpose. I’m sure that’s going to change, so I scoop them up whenever I see them.

My father is visiting for a few days, so I probably won’t get the chance to put out anything new til Sunday, unless I manage to grab an hour here and an hour there. (They take a lot longer to make than you might imagine!). We shall see. At any rate, normal rates of production should return next week!

If you usually only watch the videos through this site, you might enjoy a rummage through my YouTube channel, where you can find my (horrible audio quality) original Minecraft series from Alpha/Beta, and a few other gaming videos.